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When you get a computer can you please elaborate?
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Jeromy Anglim♦Dec 2 '13 at 6:26

1 Answer
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The possible concept you may be looking at is a fad. Which can be explained under the umbrella of several social-psychological theories. Dynamics including conformity, changes to individual behavior and personality within a group, perception bias with regard to opinions held by a group as opposed to an individual.

A Fad is any form of behaviour that develops amongst a large population and is collectively followed enthusiastically for a period of time, generally as a result of the behaviour being perceived as popular by one's peers or being deemed "cool" by social media. A fad is said to "catch on" when the number of people adopting it begins to increase rapidly. ...

... Apart from general novelty, fads may be driven by mass media programming, emotional excitement, peer pressure, or the desire of "being hip" ...

In economics, the term is used in a similar way. Fads are mean-reverting deviations from intrinsic value caused by social or psychological forces like those that cause fashions in political beliefs or consumption goods

The bandwagon effect is a well documented form of groupthink in behavioral science and has many applications.[which?] The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as fads and trends clearly do, with "the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have already done so". As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence.

The tendency to follow the actions or beliefs of others can occur because individuals directly prefer to conform, or because individuals derive information from others. Both explanations have been used for evidence of conformity in psychological experiments.